Personal Jukebox

Last updated

The Personal Jukebox (also known as PJB-100 or Music Compressor) was the first consumer hard drive-based digital audio player. Introduced in 1999, [1] it preceded the Apple iPod, SanDisk Sansa, and other similar players. It was designed and developed by Compaq Research (SRC and PAAD groups) starting in May 1998. Compaq did not release the player themselves, but licensed the design to HanGo Electronics Co., Ltd. of South Korea.

Contents

Compaq Research published a software development kit for the unit, which enabled users to develop tools, drivers and applications for different operating systems.

Personal Jukebox HanGo PJB100 Personal Jukebox.jpg
Personal Jukebox

History

Development

The PJB was created as a personal audio appliance prototype by DEC Systems Research Center and Palo Alto Advanced Development group (PAAD). The project started in May 1998, a month before the Digital Equipment Corporation merger into Compaq was completed, and a final product was brought to market in November 1999. The PJB was the first hard-disk-based MP3 player made available on the market.

The "100" in the "PJB-100" name was chosen from the capacity of the original 4.86 GB hard drive in the first Personal Jukebox. With this drive, the unit was expected to hold about 100 popular (45 minute) music CDs encoded at 128 kbit/s. The name was kept for the later models with bigger hard drives, even though these could store a larger number of albums.

The PJB-100 was the first MP3 portable to garner a "Milestone" product designation from MP3 Newswire, which they defined in their January 2000 review of the PJB-100 as "any product whose breakthrough innovations are so significant, they influence the future course of its industry".

Licensing, marketing and distribution

Instead of manufacturing the player themselves, Compaq licensed the design to HanGo, which called it the "Personal Jukebox - PJB-100". The license from Compaq to HanGo was worldwide exclusive - nobody else could license the technology from Compaq during the term of the HanGo license. HanGo granted a distribution agreement to US company Hy-Tek Manufacturing of Sugar Grove, IL in 2001. HanGo rebranded the units sold through Hy-Tek as the "Compressor".

HanGo took the PJB-100 into mass production and introduced it to the public at the Las Vegas COMDEX in November 1999. The first units were sold in a special auction held by MP3.com, with bids exceeding US$1000. Some winners received their players before the end of 1999. The first auctioned units were hand-built by the Compaq engineers who designed it and had single-digit serial numbers.

Specifications

Hardware

Digital signal processor (DSP)

The heart of the PJB is its Digital Signal Processor. It controls the hard-drive, buttons, LCD, USB interface and handles MP3-decoding for playback. The PJB uses a 24-bit Motorola 56309 DSP running at 33 MHz. The MP3 codec (which is about 2 MB in assembly DSP code) was licensed from Thomson and Fraunhofer IIS.

Memory

The PJB has 12 MB of DRAM and 1 MB of flash memory.

The DRAM is used to buffer data (between 8 and 12 minutes of music, depending on the bitrate used for encoding) from the hard disk during playback. The buffer allows the disk to be run only intermittently, preserving battery life. When the hard-disk is stopped, battery life is preserved; the ramp-loaded heads also retract from the disk surface, helping to reduce the possibility of damage.

The flash memory houses the firmware as well as the bootstrap.

Communication interface

To transfer data, the PJB is equipped with a USB 1.1 Type B connector. Inside is a Philips PDIUSBD12 USB peripheral controller, which averages a raw throughput of about 400 kB/s. Early prototypes used Ethernet instead of USB for data transmission. USB was used in production models because it was more common than Ethernet on standard home computers in 1998.

Display

The PJB's LCD has a resolution of 128×64 pixels (2:1 ratio) at a diameter of 3 inches (76.2 mm). Later versions of the PJB also featured a backlit display (the backlight comes on when the unit is powered on, or a button is pressed and turns off automatically after a few seconds). The character set the PJB uses internally is Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1), with some minor variations. One of the Compaq developers stated that "it's missing some of the symbols in the range 160 to 255 (because I got bored when I was creating them :-). Upper case accented characters are rendered unaccented because that looks better within the font's 9-pixel height. There are some glyphs in the range 0 to 31, used for the symbols on the screen.

Hard drive

While flash players could store between 32 and a maximum of 128 MB at the time, the first PJB could store 4.86 GB of music. While the PJB-100 was updated as bigger drives became available, it was also possible for end users to replace the hard drive (although voiding the warranty in that case).

Buttons/controls

The PJB has 6 buttons on the front:

Volume is adjusted by a wheel on the unit's right side, using a digital mechanism (it can be turned indefinitely). It also is possible to click or push the wheel, which pauses playback and turns the unit off after about one minute. When the unit is powered off and the wheel is pressed for a few seconds, playback resumes. This also works when the buttons are locked, in case the main controls cannot be easily accessed.

On the same side is also a small switch which locks the unit’s controls (except for the wheel).

Battery and power supply

The PJB is not powered by dry cell batteries like most other players at the time of its development, but by a provided HanGo Lithium ion battery. HanGo sold a more powerful 1600 mA battery to be used in the PJB.

The PJB includes a 5V power supply which charges the battery and enables playback without a battery in the unit at all. The charging control circuit for the battery is built into the PJB itself, not the power supply, so the use of a replacement power supply requires only the proper voltage and sufficient current capacity.

Accessories

Included accessories

Compared to other players, the PJB included accessories. Details varied from distributor to distributor, but UHU/Portacomp AG included:

Optional accessories

Accessories were offered by distributors (among them headphones and speakers, also for use with other audio hardware than the PJB and replacements for the included accessories):

Firmware

Features and version history

The latest firmware version, which surfaced in December 2003, is v2.3.3-alpha; the latest stable version is v2.3.2, introduced in mid-2001. Initially, the functions provided by the player were basic: when music was played back, selecting another track would immediately start this track and stop the current one; playlists had to be created on the computer; files could only be uploaded to the PJB, but not downloaded back to the computer. New firmware versions came out regularly, but were mostly bug fixes with very few new functions introduced.

Later firmware versions added some of the most requested features:

File system and table of contents (TOC)

The PJB's disk is not formatted as FAT or FAT32 as is the case with most of the players that were released later, and enables those to be mounted as another drive in an operating system. Instead, a unique file system is used, which, while losing the mounting ability, is optimized for the structure of MP3 files (having a cluster size of 128 kB, which equals about 8 seconds of 128-kBit-encoded MP3-music). Therefore, managing actions like defragging become unnecessary. The file system allows the linking of Tracks into various Discs/Sets. Therefore, each track is ideally only stored once on the disc and recurring occurrences of it (for example in playlists or samplers) are just links to the original file. This may help to preserve a good amount of disk space and allows for more tracks to be stored on the disk.

All of this info is stored in the TOC (table of contents). The TOC is stored in a human-readable text-format and can be downloaded, changed with a text editor and re-uploaded to the PJB again. A copy of the TOC is always stored on the unit as well, so errors and damage to the original TOC can usually be fixed.

Software

Software development kit

The original developers at Compaq Research designed an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the unit and published it under the Open Source GPL license in 2000.

Drivers

The PJB does not integrate itself as a USB mass storage device into modern operating systems. Special drivers are required to make the operating system recognize an attached PJB. Drivers for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS were included, while drivers for Linux were developed by the open source community.

Jukebox Manager (Windows, Mac OS)

The included management tool for the PJB is the Jukebox Manager (the latest Windows version is v1.5.6). It can create/delete/manage Sets, Discs and Tracks (when uploading, the user can choose which ID3-tag will represent which level). It can also encode CDs directly onto the PJB and query the CDDB for the proper disc/track information. Finally, it can update the firmware. If manipulating some values in the Windows Registry, a hidden menu appears, which can be used to debug and, in some cases repair a damaged TOC. The Jukebox Manager does not make use of some of the firmware’s later features, such as downloading tracks back to the computer and does not provide advanced features such as mass-uploading, synchronizing or creating playlists from M3U-playlists.

Linux projects

There are Linux projects operating on SourceForge (some under the banner of the OpenPJB project). These range from Jukebox-Manager-like applications with a GUI for various window managers to projects making the PJB's file system mountable as a drive in Linux. Some of the projects include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">USB flash drive</span> Data storage device

A flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and usually weighs less than 30 g (1 oz). Since first offered for sale in late 2000, the storage capacities of USB drives range from 8 to 256 gigabytes (GB), 512 GB and 1 terabyte (TB). As of 2023, 2 TB flash drives were the largest currently in production. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of memory chip used, and are thought to physically last between 10 and 100 years under normal circumstances.

The Nomad was a range of digital audio players designed and sold by Creative Technology Limited, and later discontinued in 2004. Subsequent players now fall exclusively under the MuVo and ZEN brands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">USB mass storage device class</span> USB device class for drives

The USB mass storage device class is a set of computing communications protocols, specifically a USB Device Class, defined by the USB Implementers Forum that makes a USB device accessible to a host computing device and enables file transfers between the host and the USB device. To a host, the USB device acts as an external hard drive; the protocol set interfaces with a number of storage devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creative Zen</span> Line of portable media players by Creative Technology (2004–2011)

ZEN is a series of portable media players designed and manufactured by Creative Technology Limited from 2004 to 2011. The players evolved from the NOMAD brand through the NOMAD Jukebox series of music players, with the first separate "ZEN" branded models released in 2004. The last Creative Zen player, X-Fi3, was released at the end of 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dell Digital Jukebox</span>

The Dell Digital Jukebox or just Dell DJ is a brand name for a series of digital audio players sold by the Dell corporation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Portable media player</span> Portable device capable of storing and playing digital media

A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory, microdrive, SD cards or hard drive; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media, such as cassette tapes or vinyl records.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rio Carbon</span> Line of digital audio players

The Rio Carbon is a line of digital audio players that was produced by the now defunct Rio from 2004 to 2005. It was similar in size, capacity, and cost with Apple's iPod Mini which debuted earlier the same year. This was Rio's second player to use a miniature hard disk for storage, after the Rio Nitrus, which was first to market with a 1.5 GB drive in late 2003.

iRiver H300 series Series of discontinued portable digital audio players

The iRiver H300 series are a series of portable audio players developed by iRiver, made up of the iRiver H320 and H340 models. They were first announced on September 22, 2004 replacing the H100/iHP-100. Each can play music, transfer pictures directly from digital cameras and UMS-compatible devices, such as flash drives, and display digital images on a colour screen. In the United States, the H320 initially retailed for $329 and the H340 was $429.

iRiver H100 series Series of discontinued portable digital audio players

The iRiver H100 series is a series of discontinued portable digital audio players (DAP) made by iriver and originally released in October 2003. The models in the H100 series differ mainly in hard drive storage capacity. The players were succeeded by the iriver H300 series.

iAUDIO Portable media player brand

iAUDIO is the brand name for a range of portable media players produced by Korean consumer electronics and software corporation Cowon Systems, Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RCA Lyra</span> Series of portable audio players

Lyra is a series of MP3 and portable media players (PMP). Initially it was developed and sold by Indianapolis-based Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., a part of Thomson Multimedia, from 1999 under its RCA brand in the United States and under the Thomson brand in Europe. There were also RCA/Thomson PMPs without the Lyra name, such as the RCA Kazoo (RD1000), RCA Opal and RCA Perl. In January 2008, Thomson sold its Consumer Electronics part including the RCA brand and Lyra line to AudioVox. RCA-branded PMPs are still being made today in its domestic market but no longer under the Lyra name. The Lyra was an early pioneer in digital audio players, although in later years most of its output were OEM products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samsung YEPP</span> Brand of electronic devices

Yepp was Samsung Electronics' digital audio player brand until Samsung decided to retire most of their family brands in February 2011. From then on, their MP3 players were simply branded "Samsung" worldwide until they discontinued all of them in late 2013. The brand included a wide range of hard-drive based as well as flash-memory based players. The name is claimed to be an acronym for "young, energetic, passionate person".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rio Forge</span> Digital audio player

The RioForge is a digital audio player that was produced by Rio Audio, Inc. While it competed in the same market as Apple Inc's iPod mini, it is considerably different as it plays from internal memory, SD card, or FM broadcast and runs on a single AAA battery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SanDisk portable media players</span> Line of portable media players

SanDisk has produced a number of flash memory-based digital audio and portable media players since 2005. The current range of products bears the SanDisk Clip name. SanDisk players were formerly marketed under the Sansa name until 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archos Gmini series</span>

The Gmini is a series of portable audio and video players released by Archos in 2004 and 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archos AV series</span>

The Archos AV series is a line of portable media players from the company called Archos that was released through 2003 to 2005. This series introduced the digital video recorder for the AV500, an optional feature that would be compatible in subsequent players. Although the AV series did not have standalone digital audio players, Archos did release them under the concurrently released Gmini series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archos Jukebox series</span> Digital audio device

The Archos Jukebox is a series of Archos portable audio players from 2000 through 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sansa Fuze</span> 2008 portable media player by SanDisk

The Sansa Fuze is a portable media player developed by SanDisk and released on March 8, 2008. The Fuze is available in three different Flash memory capacities: 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB and comes in six different colors: black, blue, pink, red, silver, and white. Storage is expandable via a microSDHC slot with capacity up to 32 GB, and unofficially to 64 GB or more via FAT32 formatted SDXC cards. All models have a 1.9 inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 220 by 176 pixels and a built-in monaural microphone and FM tuner; recordings of the latter two are saved as PCM WAV files.

The French consumer electronics company Archos manufactured a number of products which have since been discontinued.

The following is a list of software used in the Personal Jukebox. It includes computer-based software, as well as device software

References

  1. Smith, David (16 March 2015). EBOOK: Exploring Innovation. McGraw-Hill Education. p. 156. ISBN   9780077158408. Over the course of a year Birrell's team solved the problems of energy man- agement, navigation, file transfer and integration with a PC, and the PLB-100 went on the market almost two years before the iPod, in November 1999.